Northwest Austin Edition | June 2025

BY BRITTANY ANDERSON

Assessing the need

Looking ahead

Mental health hospital visits From 2019-2023, more Texans visited an emergency department over an inpatient or outpatient clinic for a mental health visit. Outpatient visits Inpatient visits Emergency department visits 2019 540,388

Investments at some St. David’s facilities are continuing amid some of the delays. A $52 million parking garage project to add just under a thousand parking spaces is underway at the North Austin Medical Center, as well as a $20 million three-phase expansion of its “significantly undersized” general emergency department, the first phase of which could be complete toward the end of 2025, Huffstutler said. A $188 million expansion project at the South Austin Medical Center, which could be complete by late 2027, will add a 24-bed inpatient rehabilitation unit, 36 medical-surgical beds, six new operating rooms and shell space for an additional 36 beds in the future. The system’s two largest ongoing projects from the 2022 announcement are the construction of full-service hospitals in Kyle and Leander. Last year, the system officially acquired land for a hospital in Kyle. Development of this hospital is likely to occur “much more rapidly” than the Leander hospital, which is still in the design phase and has expanded from 60 to 100 beds since the original plan. St. David’s built a freestanding emergency room in Leander in 2018 with the intention of connecting it to a future hospital. The Kyle hospital could follow this two- phase plan, but if construction of this hospital is prioritized, the emergency center and hospital would be built in tandem. Officials said they are expected to have a decision within the next six months on which hospital will begin construction first.

According to previous Community Impac t report- ing, the behavioral health hospital initially planned to provide mental health services for adolescents, adults and older adults, and include 80 beds with the capacity for more in the future. The project faces delays as St. David’s officials weigh whether to build the hospital on a site across from the North Austin Medical Center as originally planned or acquire an existing facility in the region, Huffstutler said. St. David’s officials did not provide comment to Community Impact on whether the site near the medical center is still being considered. “[The behavioral health hospital] is probably the one, honestly, that’s a little further behind right now and has a little less certainty to it at this point as some of the others,” Huffstutler said. “Although, we believe behavioral health services, and capacity for those, needs to be expanded in this community.” Patients coming to St. David’s for mental health often need inpatient admission or to be placed in an outpatient program, Huffstutler said, but services like this are not “adequately available.”

661,134

2,429,316

2020

539,166

622,172

2,308,334

2021

552,782

624,270

2,172,922

2022

508,354

617,948

1,994,046

2023

503,988

649,674

2,096,240

SOURCES: TEXAS DEPARTMENT OF STATE HEALTH SERVICES/COMMUNITY IMPACT

Offering input

In some areas, a 2,000-square-foot lease over 10 years could cost around $1.5 million, and a medical build-out could cost upward of $400,000, he said. “It takes a special breed of physician to fill that [care] gap on their own, as opposed to the health care companies going out and doing that,” Stanley said.

Austin’s population boom is fueling demand for medical office space, said Todd Stanley, senior vice president at health care real estate agency Practice Real Estate Group. While large health systems typically build with fewer constraints, independent providers face more barriers, especially in areas such as The Domain.

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